UCP in no danger of becoming Wildrose 2.0

News Flash---

UCP in no danger of becoming Wildrose 2.0

The hot topic of the week seems to be the United Conservative Party’s recent annual general meeting.

Like every other political party AGM, members in attendance elected new board members, and approved new policies aimed at influencing the government’s future priorities. Upon its creation, the UCP was supposed to be a grassroots-driven party, so member input was supposed to be encouraged and embraced.

Apparently, this concept is controversial to some political commentators, who resorted to click-bait headlines and outdated narratives to describe the meeting.

In a display of bias worthy of the CBC, probably the dumbest take coming out of these reports was the idea that the UCP is becoming Wildrose 2.0.

I mean, I wish.

Of the 27 policies approved by UCP members last week, the vast majority can be seen as the grassroots rejection of the intrusive agenda adopted under the Kenney administration.

The members strongly opposed vaccine passports and mandates, demanded stronger protection for freedom of speech, and called for legislative changes to better protect the rights of parents in the K-12 education system.

These are issues I have personally raised both inside and outside of government, and contrary to the bleating of Kenney’s inner circle, they are issues that can be easily resolved. All the government has to do is admit its failures and start listening to the grassroots.

I certainly applaud the efforts of UCP members to fix these failed policies; there is plenty of room for improvement. Will the Smith government turn over a new leaf? Anything is possible, but the fact that none of these issues were adequately addressed over the past year does not give me much hope for meaningful change.

What the media commentators don’t seem to understand is that even if the government adopted every one of these 27 new policies wholeheartedly, a complete overhaul would still be necessary to restore the government to fundamental conservative principles.

Here is a short list of the basic economic issues that were not addressed by the party’s membership:

• Government spending. The government of Alberta has a spending problem. Under the NDP the UCP complained about it, but once in government, the UCP saw fit to increase spending. The government needs to spend less so that it can tax less.

• Taxes. The government may have tabled legislation to require a referendum for income tax increases, but that doesn’t do anything to reduce income taxes or prevent other tax and fee increases for Albertans. And like the former PC government’s balanced budget legislation, this new legislation can be easily repealed, making it effectively useless in the long term. It’s an empty gesture.

• Free markets. No single force interferes in our free market more than the government, whether it’s through regulation, subsidies, corporate welfare, or the direct investment of taxpayer money in corporate ownership. Alberta needs “No more boondoggles” legislation to prevent governments from rigging markets for its friends, and to get the government out of the business of being in business.

• Property rights: Property rights exist in Alberta as part of the Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply to the Government of Alberta, which can legally seize property on a whim. If we’re asking Albertans to invest in Alberta, this must change.

• Lobbyist and Electoral reform. Nothing kills investment like corruption. Alberta needs to significantly tighten the regulation of lobbying, which is surprisingly more lax than in Trudeau’s Ottawa. Furthermore, the Kenney government’s changes to electoral finance laws opened the door to foreign funding of PACs, leaving our system prone to undue foreign influence.

These economic issues are at the heart of what it means to be a conservative, and they were at the core of Wildrose policy. More than any other party in recent history, Wildrose championed smaller government and economic freedom.

As a proud former Wildrose MLA, I can tell you for certain that the UCP is in no immediate danger of becoming Wildrose 2.0.

But you probably won’t hear that from the CBC. It doesn’t fit their narrative.

#ableg #medhat